Temperance Hotels.

Gisborne Times, Volume VI, Issue 257, 7 November 1901, Page 3

Temperance Hotels.

\To the Editor of the Times.) Sir, —J see by your issue of the 6th that the old-time question of prohibition versus the liquor traffic still agitates the minds of the dwellers of this peaceful town. With your permission, I should like to make a few remarks in regard to a side of the question that is seldom brought before the public.“ Having occasion to take a trip which embraces quite a number of towns in this island, I determined to put up at- temperance hotels, or boardinghouses whenever I must, when to my intense disgust I found them in the majority of eases unqualifiably bad. In some the food was poor, in others the bods were wretchedly so. I have slept on the arid plains of Australia, and on the frostbound hills of North America, and have been just as comfortable as on the beds of some of our boarding-houses ; they are in the main cold, cheerless abodes, and economy is tho prevailing instinct. I have sat by an empty fireplace on a cheerless night, and then gone to hod feeling that the reward of the temperate is not here. Contrast this to the cheery welcome, the bright fire, the well-lit rooms that in most cases welcome you whon you enter a place where liquor is sold. Is it a wonder that most men sock the place that affords them the most comfort for their money ? On my journey to this town I made inquiries as to a good temperance hotol, and was told that there was not one, but that I could get good accommodation at any of the licensed ones, and so perforce I took my way thither. Now, Mr Editor, is this as it should be ? Why should all tho attraction be on ono side I fully realize that it is the salo of liquor that gives the publican his profit, and that he can afford to give good value for money received for accommodation, but is not the principle that the prohibitionists’ fight for worth some sacrifice, instead of trying to make people good b.y law, a process that always causes bitter resentment. Try a slight application of the methods employed by the other side ; lot the prohibitionists see that there is a good and attractive hotel iu each town, with good food, good beds, comfortable sitting rooms, a supply of current literature, and then above all see that they are well advertised, so that anyone visiting a town will havo no- trouble in finding it, and I will undertake to say that they will soon have a paying institution, and ono that will be a step in the right direction, and more beneficial than the caustic letters and arbitrary measures that so many of them seem to favor.—l am, etc., A Sci-'ferek.